Student Watershed Education
Every spring, the Flathead Lakers host and help educate hundreds of local students at field trips around the watershed.
Becoming Watershed Citizens
This unit is designed for grades 3-5.
The Flathead Lakers developed and offer a watershed education program, Becoming Watershed Citizens, to increase students’ understanding of the physical, biological, and social components of the Flathead watershed and their interconnections. The program includes both classroom lessons and activities and a culminating spring field trip to the Flathead Lake Biological Station.
The skills, knowledge, and understanding the students acquire through our program help enhance the students’ sense of place and connection to the Flathead watershed, as well as their responsibility for it.
Below are a few of the field trip activities:
Watercolors of the Watershed
Students reflect upon what they’ve learned about their watershed and express it through art, watercolors, fun, and inspiration.
Life Under the Microscope
Have you seen a Daphnia’s heart beat? Students get a close look at the base of the Flathead Lake food web.
Yellow Bay Stream Bugs
Students learn how stream bugs live and move in a healthy stream, and discover how certain stream insects can tell scientists about the health of a stream.
Flathead Lake’s Food Web
What would happen if invasive mussels were introduced to Flathead Lake? Our local students learn by visualizing the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural world.
Be Aquatic Invasive Species Aware Unit
This unit is designed for grades 6-8.
Through teaching this unit, students will be introduced to aquatic invasive species (AIS) that are potential threats to Montana waters. These lessons explore pathways of introduction, methods of dispersal, potential environmental impacts, distribution of these organisms, and adaptations that make these species invasive, as well as impacts on different community stakeholder groups.
Creation of this unit was supported by the Flathead Lake Biological Station, the Flathead Lakers, and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.
AIS education material trunks supporting these lesson plans are available for checkout.
In 2019, we helped bring AIS education to over 400 middle school students from 5 local schools, in partnership with the Flathead Lake Biological Station and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
Following the Be AIS Aware Unit classroom work, students participate in a community mussel walk. The Flathead Lake Mussel Walks were a collaborative effort with our partners at Flathead Lake Biological Station, Natural Resources Department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Montana State Parks, and local schools.
Whitefish Middle School students watch a demonstration from Deb and the sisters, who can smell invasive mussels on watercraft.
Somers Middle School students inspect West Shores State Park, looking for invasive mussels and picking up trash.